Throwback Thursday: Revoltech Professor Layton

It's been a while, but Throwback Thursday is back! For those of you who forget what it is, it's our feature where we look back at older figures that are still available and review them, because hey, older stuff is good, too. And what better to kick things off again with than Revoltech Professor Layton?

I'll confess I've had Layton for a good long while, having been so bogged down with other things that I never got a chance to shoot him because I could never find a good spot to do it at. Plus, he was out of stock for a good long while until recent weeks, so perhaps the wait helped. But the question is: for those of you who don't have the professor in poseable form, should you even bother?

So let's start with this box thing. It's a pretty standard Revoltech Yamaguchi box, just featuring Layton and Luke in the bottom left corner. You can see all the accessories he comes with right through the window there, which is pretty nice.

On the back are several of the different poses you can put Layton in. As part of the Poseability Challenge I like to do, I actually tried to do several (you'll see them further on) and for the most part, they turned out well.

And here's Layton out of the box! As you can see, he's been faithfully recreated from his appearance in the Professor Layton games ... though if this figure was from a game, it'd be Professor Layton and the Backwards Shoulder Joint of DOOM. Somehow, his right shoulder joining got put in backwards, and under the trenchcoat that's affixed to his body, I couldn't tell and didn't realize it until the entire joint fell apart on me. I managed to fix it but it's a little bit loose now.

His base is fairly simple: a standard Revoltech support for the back along with a brick path base that looks very nice, even up close. I love some of the weathering details on the base that Kaiyodo have put into it.

OH CRAP HE'S A DEMON - nah, not really. This is just how his hat stays on and how you change faces, a relatively simple process. Layton comes with two faces, his smiling one above ...

And his serious business face. You can also see two of his extra hands, one of which is sculpted for holding accessories in it like his journal. The wrist joints are fairly stable on Layton and slide in and out with relative ease, meaning that as long as you're careful, you shouldn't have to worry about them snapping.

The journal itself is actually hinged, meaning it can be opened or closed, depending on how you want to display it. In the hand, it has to stay open because it's apparently too wide to fit in closed. On top of that, there's nice detail on the cover of the journal, but yes, you can probably see the plastic reside left from the molding process. It's only really noticeable if you're looking at it, though.

The bad news is that, if you look even closer, you can see that it's being held in the hand by something. That's white sticky tack, and it's there because the tiny knob that was for the book to fit into the hand snapped off the first time I tried to put it in there. This is the second Revoltech I've had issues with concerning ridiculously small and fragile pegs (Starscream's gun being the other one), but at least this time around, the fix is rather simple.

Here you can see what I like to call the "thinking hand," as it's intended to be used for poses like this. Actually getting Layton into place to replicate this pose was a bit hard, thanks to the loose joint and thanks to the trenchcoat kind of getting in the way. It took me about 5 minutes of trying to do it, but it worked.

Another extra Layton hand holds his pen in place. The pen's a separate accessory, meaning you can use it for other Revoltechs, and it fits firmly in the necessary hand without the use of those dreaded pegs. As you can see, it goes quite well with the journal.

Layton's also got a pointy finger you can use for those "A-ha!" moments. Or to signal that he's number one, if you so choose.

But who needs a base, anyways, when you have a sweet chair to sit in? Here's the chair and table Layton comes with, each well sculpted and with some surprising detail on the chair. Layton fits very well in the chair, too, thanks in part to the design of his hip joints. You can also see the saucer (which can go in the left hand for holding things, but I refuse to tempt fate) as well as the last of his extra hands, holding a teacup. This is how I have Layton displayed now, mostly because the pose is just so awesome.

Wait, was is it the professor sees?

Oh, it's just Yotsuba! At least it wasn't a matchstick puzzle ...

Faults aside, Layton is a very fun Revoltech to have, especially if you've ever played any of the games in his series. Do be careful in handling some parts of him as he can be fragile, though. On top of being fun, he's also ridiculously cheap cost-wise right now having come out last year. Do yourself a favor and pick this fellow up!

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